3,541 research outputs found
Response of turbulent enstrophy to sudden implementation of spanwise wall oscillation in channel flow
The response of turbulent enstrophy to a sudden implementation of spanwise wall oscillation (SWO) is studied in a turbulent channel flow via direct numerical simulation. In the beginning of the application of SWO, a significant correlation is formed between omega (y) (') and omega (z) (') . A transient growth of turbulent enstrophy occurs, which directly enhances turbulent dissipation and drifts the turbulent flow towards a new lower-drag condition. Afterwards, the terms related to the stretching of vorticity (omega (x) , omega (y) (') , and omega (z) ), the inclination of omega (y) (') by , the turn of omega I" (z) by , and the horizontal shear of omega I" (z) by are suppressed due to the presence of SWO, leading to attenuation of the turbulent enstrophy.</p
Allitridi Inhibits Multiple Cardiac Potassium Channels Expressed in HEK 293 Cells
published_or_final_versio
Observation of pseudogap behavior in a strongly interacting Fermi gas
Ultracold atomic Fermi gases present an opportunity to study strongly
interacting Fermi systems in a controlled and uncomplicated setting. The
ability to tune attractive interactions has led to the discovery of
superfluidity in these systems with an extremely high transition temperature,
near T/T_F = 0.2. This superfluidity is the electrically neutral analog of
superconductivity; however, superfluidity in atomic Fermi gases occurs in the
limit of strong interactions and defies a conventional BCS description. For
these strong interactions, it is predicted that the onset of pairing and
superfluidity can occur at different temperatures. This gives rise to a
pseudogap region where, for a range of temperatures, the system retains some of
the characteristics of the superfluid phase, such as a BCS-like dispersion and
a partially gapped density of states, but does not exhibit superfluidity. By
making two independent measurements: the direct observation of pair
condensation in momentum space and a measurement of the single-particle
spectral function using an analog to photoemission spectroscopy, we directly
probe the pseudogap phase. Our measurements reveal a BCS-like dispersion with
back-bending near the Fermi wave vector k_F that persists well above the
transition temperature for pair condensation
Mathematically Gifted Adolescents Have Deficiencies in Social Valuation and Mentalization
Many mathematically gifted adolescents are characterized as being indolent, underachieving and unsuccessful despite their high cognitive ability. This is often due to difficulties with social and emotional development. However, research on social and emotional interactions in gifted adolescents has been limited. The purpose of this study was to observe differences in complex social strategic behaviors between gifted and average adolescents of the same age using the repeated Ultimatum Game. Twenty-two gifted adolescents and 24 average adolescents participated in the Ultimatum Game. Two adolescents participate in the game, one as a proposer and the other as a responder. Because of its simplicity, the Ultimatum Game is an apt tool for investigating complex human emotional and cognitive decision-making in an empirical setting. We observed strategic but socially impaired offers from gifted proposers and lower acceptance rates from gifted responders, resulting in lower total earnings in the Ultimatum Game. Thus, our results indicate that mathematically gifted adolescents have deficiencies in social valuation and mentalization
Influenza nucleoprotein delivered with aluminium salts protects mice from an influenza virus that expresses an altered nucleoprotein sequence
Influenza virus poses a difficult challenge for protective immunity. This virus is adept at altering its surface proteins, the proteins that are the targets of neutralizing antibody. Consequently, each year a new vaccine must be developed to combat the current recirculating strains. A universal influenza vaccine that primes specific memory cells that recognise conserved parts of the virus could prove to be effective against both annual influenza variants and newly emergent potentially pandemic strains. Such a vaccine will have to contain a safe and effective adjuvant that can be used in individuals of all ages. We examine protection from viral challenge in mice vaccinated with the nucleoprotein from the PR8 strain of influenza A, a protein that is highly conserved across viral subtypes. Vaccination with nucleoprotein delivered with a universally used and safe adjuvant, composed of insoluble aluminium salts, provides protection against viruses that either express the same or an altered version of nucleoprotein. This protection correlated with the presence of nucleoprotein specific CD8 T cells in the lungs of infected animals at early time points after infection. In contrast, immunization with NP delivered with alum and the detoxified LPS adjuvant, monophosphoryl lipid A, provided some protection to the homologous viral strain but no protection against infection by influenza expressing a variant nucleoprotein. Together, these data point towards a vaccine solution for all influenza A subtypes
Continuous-wave room-temperature diamond maser
The maser, older sibling of the laser, has been confined to relative
obscurity due to its reliance on cryogenic refrigeration and high-vacuum
systems. Despite this it has found application in deep-space communications and
radio astronomy due to its unparalleled performance as a low-noise amplifier
and oscillator. The recent demonstration of a room-temperature solid- state
maser exploiting photo-excited triplet states in organic pentacene molecules
paves the way for a new class of maser that could find applications in
medicine, security and sensing, taking advantage of its sensitivity and low
noise. However, to date, only pulsed operation has been observed in this
system. Furthermore, organic maser molecules have poor thermal and mechanical
properties, and their triplet sub-level decay rates make continuous emission
challenging: alternative materials are therefore required. Therefore, inorganic
materials containing spin-defects such as diamond and silicon carbide have been
proposed. Here we report a continuous-wave (CW) room-temperature maser
oscillator using optically pumped charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defect centres
in diamond. This demonstration unlocks the potential of room-temperature
solid-state masers for use in a new generation of microwave devices.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure
Baicalin inhibits the expression of PGE2 and MMP-3 in human periodontal ligament cells
published_or_final_versio
JDP2 overexpression provokes cardiac dysfunction in mice
The transcriptional regulator JDP2 (Jun dimerization protein 2) has been identified as a prognostic marker for patients to develop heart failure after myocardial infarction. We now performed in vivo studies on JDP2-overexpressing mice, to clarify the impact of JDP2 on heart failure progression. Therefore, during birth up to the age of 4 weeks cardiac-specific JDP2 overexpression was prevented by doxycycline feeding in transgenic mice. Then, JDP2 overexpression was started. Already after 1 week, cardiac function, determined by echocardiography, decreased which was also resembled on the cardiomyocyte level. After 5 weeks blood pressure declined, ejection fraction and cardiac output was reduced and left ventricular dilatation developed. Heart weight/body weight, and mRNA expression of ANP, inflammatory marker genes, collagen and fibronectin increased. Collagen 1 protein expression increased, and fibrosis developed. As an additional sign of elevated extracellular matrix remodeling, matrix metalloproteinase 2 activity increased in JDP2 mice. Thus, JDP2 overexpression is deleterious to heart function in vivo. It can be concluded that JDP2 overexpression provokes cardiac dysfunction in adult mice that is accompanied by hypertrophy and fibrosis. Thus, induction of JDP2 is a maladaptive response contributing to heart failure development
Selective Constraints on Amino Acids Estimated by a Mechanistic Codon Substitution Model with Multiple Nucleotide Changes
Empirical substitution matrices represent the average tendencies of
substitutions over various protein families by sacrificing gene-level
resolution. We develop a codon-based model, in which mutational tendencies of
codon, a genetic code, and the strength of selective constraints against amino
acid replacements can be tailored to a given gene. First, selective constraints
averaged over proteins are estimated by maximizing the likelihood of each 1-PAM
matrix of empirical amino acid (JTT, WAG, and LG) and codon (KHG) substitution
matrices. Then, selective constraints specific to given proteins are
approximated as a linear function of those estimated from the empirical
substitution matrices.
Akaike information criterion (AIC) values indicate that a model allowing
multiple nucleotide changes fits the empirical substitution matrices
significantly better. Also, the ML estimates of transition-transversion bias
obtained from these empirical matrices are not so large as previously
estimated. The selective constraints are characteristic of proteins rather than
species. However, their relative strengths among amino acid pairs can be
approximated not to depend very much on protein families but amino acid pairs,
because the present model, in which selective constraints are approximated to
be a linear function of those estimated from the JTT/WAG/LG/KHG matrices, can
provide a good fit to other empirical substitution matrices including cpREV for
chloroplast proteins and mtREV for vertebrate mitochondrial proteins.
The present codon-based model with the ML estimates of selective constraints
and with adjustable mutation rates of nucleotide would be useful as a simple
substitution model in ML and Bayesian inferences of molecular phylogenetic
trees, and enables us to obtain biologically meaningful information at both
nucleotide and amino acid levels from codon and protein sequences.Comment: Table 9 in this article includes corrections for errata in the Table
9 published in 10.1371/journal.pone.0017244. Supporting information is
attached at the end of the article, and a computer-readable dataset of the ML
estimates of selective constraints is available from
10.1371/journal.pone.001724
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